Artaxs
Abrasax, my new compy!
2009-03-15 9:17 AM PDT
So, many of you have noticed my new gaming rig specs (bottom of profile) or the way I've been updating my profile avatar with pictures of my new machine.
With a lot of help from my room mate and a significant investment on NewEgg, it took us three evenings to get everything assembled, dialed-in and modestly overclocked to 3.33GHz. The Core i7 is everything it's cracked up to be; I could easily run this sucker at 4GHz with just a little bump in voltage, and the Xigmatek Dark Knight CPU cooler keeps my processor at sub-40C temps even during gaming.
I can not say enough good things about the Antec 1200 case. It's big enough to hold the 10.5" video cards (like my EVGA GTX 285) and a big heat sink. I comes with many big, quiet fans and it has a tray under the motherboard mountings for easy cable management (with zip-ties already built-in!).
So, the new machine runs Dawn of War 2 at 1920 res and Ultra settings and leaves me enough system bandwidth to use Xfire Video Capture, etc. Empire: Total War, the reason I had to build a new system, runs at High settings at 1920 res -- if I want Ultra, I'm going to have to run it at 1680 res or get a second video card in SLi.... and that's not going to happen while I'm running Windows XP Pro with it's 32-bit limitations on RAM addresses.
The real secret weapon of my new system is a little 60GB solid state drive from OCZ. My Windows install and a few choice games (Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Empire and DoW2, right now) are on the super-fast SSD while storage and other, lesser games go on my 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD.
And no, I am in no hurry to buy Vista. Maybe when Windows 7 (DOS 13, anyone?) comes out I'll consider upgrading, and going SLI and plugging in more RAM. My DFI mobo supports up to 24GB.... hmmm.
Right now, the only upgrade I'm considering is adding a side intake fan to the case, perhaps a Scythe S-flux, as that GTX 285 gets HOT when I play Fallout. Ambient case temps stay nice and cool, but I think another 120mm fan blowing right onto the video card will make a big difference and give me some more room to overclock. If that doesn't cut temps down significantly, then it's time to take apart my video card and lap it's heat sinks and reapply the thermal paste and therma-tape.
- [Xfire] Artaxs
PS. Call of Duty 5 came free with my CPU; is it worth my time to install it? What other new games would look awesome on my 24" Samsung LCD? And what's a better benchmark for the Cry Engine, Crysis or Far Cry 2? (and which is more fun?)
views: 815
With a lot of help from my room mate and a significant investment on NewEgg, it took us three evenings to get everything assembled, dialed-in and modestly overclocked to 3.33GHz. The Core i7 is everything it's cracked up to be; I could easily run this sucker at 4GHz with just a little bump in voltage, and the Xigmatek Dark Knight CPU cooler keeps my processor at sub-40C temps even during gaming.
I can not say enough good things about the Antec 1200 case. It's big enough to hold the 10.5" video cards (like my EVGA GTX 285) and a big heat sink. I comes with many big, quiet fans and it has a tray under the motherboard mountings for easy cable management (with zip-ties already built-in!).
So, the new machine runs Dawn of War 2 at 1920 res and Ultra settings and leaves me enough system bandwidth to use Xfire Video Capture, etc. Empire: Total War, the reason I had to build a new system, runs at High settings at 1920 res -- if I want Ultra, I'm going to have to run it at 1680 res or get a second video card in SLi.... and that's not going to happen while I'm running Windows XP Pro with it's 32-bit limitations on RAM addresses.
The real secret weapon of my new system is a little 60GB solid state drive from OCZ. My Windows install and a few choice games (Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Empire and DoW2, right now) are on the super-fast SSD while storage and other, lesser games go on my 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD.
And no, I am in no hurry to buy Vista. Maybe when Windows 7 (DOS 13, anyone?) comes out I'll consider upgrading, and going SLI and plugging in more RAM. My DFI mobo supports up to 24GB.... hmmm.
Right now, the only upgrade I'm considering is adding a side intake fan to the case, perhaps a Scythe S-flux, as that GTX 285 gets HOT when I play Fallout. Ambient case temps stay nice and cool, but I think another 120mm fan blowing right onto the video card will make a big difference and give me some more room to overclock. If that doesn't cut temps down significantly, then it's time to take apart my video card and lap it's heat sinks and reapply the thermal paste and therma-tape.
- [Xfire] Artaxs
PS. Call of Duty 5 came free with my CPU; is it worth my time to install it? What other new games would look awesome on my 24" Samsung LCD? And what's a better benchmark for the Cry Engine, Crysis or Far Cry 2? (and which is more fun?)
sorry (cezarikk)
2009-03-15 9:47 AM PDT
Definetely FarCry 2
Silent Sniper (rsfsniper)
2009-03-19 12:26 PM PDT
Nice, I would try it on some new titles coming out later this year, Bad Company 2 or Bio Shock 2 perhaps ^^
Lord Lokgar|ESVTV (smdhell)
2009-03-27 8:18 AM PDT
Crysis 1.2 is more than likely better to bench. I think in Warhead they dumbed down some texture resolutions...
Some custom Time of Day and graphical enhancement packs will made crysis look even better, and the gameplay is actually quite fun. Running around in the sandbox editor gives me hours of fun, just because you can make a simple map in a space of a few minutes, put in some AI and buildings and have an urban-ish fight.
Some custom Time of Day and graphical enhancement packs will made crysis look even better, and the gameplay is actually quite fun. Running around in the sandbox editor gives me hours of fun, just because you can make a simple map in a space of a few minutes, put in some AI and buildings and have an urban-ish fight.
Tinuva (eminis)
2009-06-23 11:35 AM PDT
Personally I enjoyed Crysis way more than Far Cry 2 =/
[r4p3]ȻƦÉÈƤËƦ (eario)
2009-08-20 2:24 AM PDT
Get Vista ultimate 64x right now on Newegg and you will get windows7 for free
ҬẏҬ@Ƞ (tytan001)
2010-03-10 9:54 PM PST
You should definatly upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit, it is the best OS I have ever used, and that is saying something because I have used alot of operating systems, at the moment I am only running two OSs on my computer, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit and Apple OS X 10.6.2 (Hackintosh), I have to agree with you about the overclocking of the i7, I have my 930 running stable at 4.2GHz, with my Xigmatek Dark Knight cooler doing an awsome job. You should get another GTX 285 and throw it in your system, you will see a huge performane increase, and later on you could put in a third one, but the perfomance increase isnt really that big after adding a third GPU anyway. I personally though, am waiting til the 26th of March, then I am going to get myself 2 or 3 Nvidia GTX 480 GPUs. The Nvidia Fermi architechture is amazing, and it works really well with the GPGPU functions in Windows 7's DirectX 11. Oh, and Crysis is definatly the better benchmark, and is more fun than Far Cry 2 too. But when Crysis 2 comes out later this year, expect that to set the ultra high standard in PC gaming and benchmarking.
-=-=-=- The TyTan -=-=-=-
-=-=-=- The TyTan -=-=-=-
